In a high frequency scenario, to overcome relatively large transmission losses, a beamforming (BF) technology, that is, antenna array beamforming, needs to be used in transmission of some common channels or reference signals such as a downlink measurement reference signal(DL-MRS), a physical broadcast channel (PBCH), a primary synchronization signal (PSS), and a secondary synchronization signal (SSS) to form a beam, so as to generate a large antenna gain. User equipment in a network or a cell transmits a signal in a time division manner. That is, the different beams in the cell or the network cyclically function at different moments. When one beam is corresponding to one resource (such as a radio frequency resource) by definition, because a common channel and a common reference signal are transmitted to ensure wide coverage for all users in the cell, to ensure wide coverage for all the users in the cell, transmission of the common channel and the reference signal is time-division polling transmission based on multiple resources. A broadcast channel (such as a PBCH) or a synchronization signal (such as a PSS and/or an SSS) in each resource is separately sent in multiple time units according to a fixed cycle/interval. An existing Long Term Evolution (LTE) system is used as an example. An encoded broadcast channel transmission block is mapped to a radio frame. Duration of each radio frame is 10 ms, and each radio frame includes 10 subframes. Generally, four radio frames are used as one cycle.
In the prior art, a transmission cycle of each resource is related to a quantity of resources. When receiving the signal, the user equipment needs to perform blind detection on a broadcast channel or a synchronization signal in each frame. However, because each cell is not corresponding to a fixed quantity of resources, a number of a subframe in which the user equipment performs blind detection on a broadcast channel or a synchronization signal in each frame is not fixed. A synchronization signal is used as an example. FIG. 1A and FIG. 1B are a schematic diagram of signal sending in the prior art. It can be learned by referring to FIG. 1A and FIG. 1B that, when the quantity of resources is 6, blind detection on a synchronization signal in a resource a needs to be performed in a subframe whose number is 0, 6, 2, or 4 in each frame, and one round of periodic detection on the resource a needs to use three frames. When the quantity of resources is 7, blind detection on a synchronization signal in a resource a needs to be performed in a subframe whose number is 0, 7, 4, 1, 8, 5, 2, 9, 6, or 3 in each frame, and one round of periodic detection on the resource a needs to use seven frames. Consequently, complexity of designing a broadcast channel or a synchronization signal or the like, and complexity of performing blind detection by a user are greatly increased.